CONTROVERSY

Neurology

The term diplegia should be abandoned

A F Colver, T Sethumadhavan

¹ Senior Lecturer in Community Child Health, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust and University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Donald Court House, 13 Walker Terrace, Gateshead NE8 1EB, UK
² Specialist Registrar in Paediatrics, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust, North Tyneside General Hospital, Rake Lane, North Shields, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr A F Colver, Donald Court House, 13 Walker Terrace, Gateshead NE8 1EB, UK;
allan.colver@ncl.ac.uk

---

Use of the term has served to confuse classification and obscure interpretation of epidemiological and clinical studies

---

Keywords: diplegia; cerebral palsy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

From the writings of Freud onwards there is broad agreement on the definition of cerebral palsy (CP) but attempts to classify it, based on brain pathology, timing of postulated insult, aetiology, or clinical syndrome, taking account of one or more of neurological findings, distribution, and associated impairments, have been less successful.

Any syndrome must be clearly defined, meaningful, reliable, and used consistently by different people. A few CP syndromes such as choreoathetosis with deafness caused by bilirubin encephalopathy and ataxia caused by hydrocephalus have stood the test of time and are reviewed by Ingram.¹ However, we think that diplegia is not a description of a valid category or syndrome and use of the term has served to confuse classification and obscure interpretation of epidemiological and clinical studies. We draw on historical papers and our own new analyses of recent published epidemiological papers to argue that the term diplegia should . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Atoms

Harvey Marcovitch
Arch. Dis. Child. 2003 88: 275. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Yeargin-Allsopp, M., Van Naarden Braun, K., Doernberg, N. S., Benedict, R. E., Kirby, R. S., Durkin, M. S. (2008). Prevalence of Cerebral Palsy in 8-Year-Old Children in Three Areas of the United States in 2002: A Multisite Collaboration. Pediatrics 121: 547-554 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Ancel, P.-Y., Livinec, F., Larroque, B., Marret, S., Arnaud, C., Pierrat, V., Dehan, M., N'Guyen, S., Escande, B., Burguet, A., Thiriez, G., Picaud, J.-C., Andre, M., Breart, G., Kaminski, M., and the EPIPAGE Study Group, (2006). Cerebral Palsy Among Very Preterm Children in Relation to Gestational Age and Neonatal Ultrasound Abnormalities: The EPIPAGE Cohort Study. Pediatrics 117: 828-835 [Abstract] [Full Text]  

eLetters:

Read all eLetters

Describing impairment and disability for children with cerebral palsy

Christopher Morris, et al.

ADC Online, 30 May 2003 [Full text]